College Confidential’s “Dean,” Sally Rubenstone, put together 25 of her best tips. Get your free copy of the "25 Tips from the Dean" eBook and get helpful advice on how to choose a college, get in, and pay for it: http://goo.gl/9zDJTM

Where did your 3.0-3.3 GPA child get in?

I loved this thread topic that someone else created. ( I hope you don't mind that I copied.)

We're all trying to guess what schools our B students can get into. If you're willing to share the schools that your son or daughter got into and what their GPA and tests scores were that would help the rest of us out a lot.

D graduated in 2007 with a 3.2 gpa, no AP and one honors class, 25 ACT. She applied to 9 schools, was admitted at 8, and waitlisted at one. The schools to which she was admitted were Lewis & Clark, Willamette, Beloit, U. of the Pacific, Carthage College, Valparaiso, Wittenberg and Gustavus Adolphus; waitlisted at Knox.

DD graduated with 3.2 unweighted. No AP's, 5 honours, highest math was Honors Pre-Cal.
SAT's 1050/1600.
Accepted at Guilford, Belmont Abbey, UNC Asheville, UNC Greensboro, UNC Charlotte, ECU and Western Carolina. Chose Belmont Abbey.
Her stats may have been a little low for Guilford, but we made a visit to the school which may have made a difference.

Dd graduated a couple of years back with a 3.0 unweighted, one AP, quite a few honors, SAT in the 1800s. Math was only through Alg 2. Very good extracurriculars. She got into U of Arizona and U of Indiana with merit.

dd graduated in June with 3.3 unweighted GPA, a couple Honors courses but no AP. Has ADHD and has always been a terrible test taker. SAT was 1480/2400 and ACT was 22. National Honor Society and Tri-M Music Honors Society. Strong extra-curriculars ranging from first-team all-region soccer to top honors in band.

She was accepted at UNC-Charlotte, Lenior-Rhyne University and Catawba College. Wait-listed at Appalachian State. She just started at Catawba and has a decent scholarship. So far, she loves it!

Like Packmom, we have a son at ECU. He had a 3.1 high school GPA, 1500 SAT and 24 ACT. He has learning disabilities in reading comprehension and processing speed, which hurt his test taking. Accepted at East Carolina, Barry University in Florida, University of New Orleans, and Catawba College. Did not get in to UNC-Wilmington or UNC-Asheville. Chose East Carolina.

He's now starting his second year at ECU, but college has been a lot harder than he expected.

It would also be helpful to know if the student applied for financial aid, in addition to hooks (ie: athlete, parent is an alum, URM, first generation to attend college, etc.). It would be useful to know whether the student visited the campuses and interviewed.

As you can see an unweighted 3.3 can get you accepted to a nice variety of schools. GPA is a funny thing. Some schools put more value into it, and some, although they may want a solid GPA, will look at the rest of the application more closely. Bottom line is most schools take everything into consideration. I imagine that if S was done in the 3.0 range he would have had less success so that 3.0-33. gap is pretty substancial.

Above posts mentioned financial aid. We applied for financial aid to all the schools even though we knew we wouldn't get any. It mattered little to acceptances. Why apply? Some schools require it for merit aid consideration and rather than try to figure which to apply for and which to not, we just appled to all.

Helpful Links

About College Confidential

Welcome to the leading college-bound community on the Web!

Here you'll find hundreds of pages of articles about choosing a college, getting into the college you want, how to pay for it, and much more. You'll also find the Web's busiest discussion community related to college admissions, and our CampusVibe section!About Us